From: Bill Stewart <stewarts@ix.netcom.com>
Date: Thu, 15 Aug 1996 17:28:29 +0800
To: "James A. Donald" <jamesd@echeque.com>
Subject: re: National Socio-Economic Security Need for Encryption    Technology
Message-ID: <199608150606.XAA13751@toad.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


>At 08:33 13/08/96 -0700, James A. Donald wrote:
>> > Demand for Indian programmers is less than supply not because capital
>> > has somehow failed to flow to India, but because an engineer in India
>> > is not free to produce the value that engineers elsewhere are free
>> > to produce.

I've worked with companies that bring Indian contract programmers
to Silicon Valley and also contract for work back home in Bangalore.
Sure, part of the lower price paid for programmers in India vs. importing
the same people here is probably because the government is annoying.

Why is it worth paying nearly-American-scale wages to have them
do the work here rather than 1/5 as much back home?

Part of it is because it's harder to interact with people halfway around
the world, even using email and faxes, so the jobs that succeed well
in that environment are big jobs with well-defined inputs and outputs.
For work that needs real interaction between the customer and the worker,
it helps to have the worker nearby, so it's worth paying them to come here.
For work that needs interaction between workers and machines, especially
brand-new-not-yet-working machines on high-speed networks that aren't
easy or cheap to drag across the Pacific and then connect to India,
you need bodies on site.  Even for standard equipment you can buy
more of, it's still more productive to work here where you have lots of it
and can get spare parts at Fry's than to ship some of it to India and 
have people use it there.

Also, of course, the folks who are good enough to ship halfway around the 
world to do a job for you are usually the best they've got;
they'd get more than the average programmer back in Bangalore as well.



#			Thanks;  Bill
# Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts@ix.netcom.com
# <A HREF="http://idiom.com/~wcs"> 	Defuse Authority!